


Be Unbroken

by Polly_Lynn



Series: TARDIS-Verse [24]
Category: Castle
Genre: Anniversary, Babies, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Married Couple, Married Life, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:10:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8622316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: “It’s just a day,” she tells the baby’s waving toes. Pale, pink and strong little things that slap against her mother’s palms.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A TARDIS story for the 5th anniversary of Killshot. Future fic. This is also a fill for the person who wanted babies and shameless fluff. I replied privately to that person, and apparently that means the reply and the original ask are long gone. I’m sorry, but thank you for the prompt. whoever you are. 

 

 

Will the circle be unbroken  
By and by, lord, by and by

— [Ada R. Habershon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_R._Habershon) and [Charles H. Gabriel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Gabriel)

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s just a day,” she tells the baby’s waving toes. Pale, pink and _strong_ little things that slap against her mother’s palms. 

“It _is._ ” Kate laughs. Reiterates, as though her daughter’s taking issue, and maybe she is. Her cheeks are red as she writhes against the pillows, kicking out. Opening and closing her pale, pink fingers like she’s reaching for something. Reaching for everything. 

“It’s cold out there.” Kate lifts he head from the warmth of the comforter, satisfied when the wind moans on cue and the rain _rat-a-tat-tats_ against the glass. She reaches up to tug Lily’s striped shirt down over the swell of her belly, but it’s a losing proposition. The girl squirms from side to side, almost flipping herself over, but not quite making it. She lets out an annoyed grunt, scowling at Kate before her shirt rides up all over again. 

“Cold,” she says again, pressing her lips to the wide, irresistible strip of skin and blowing a raspberry. Lily laughs and grabs at her mother’s hair. She squeals, half in fury, half in delight, as Kate captures her hands, and carefully pries open her fists. “Too cold for lilies, right?” She scoots higher on the bed, out of range of the baby’s greedy, grasping hands for the moment at least. She peers down at the wide eyes, glinting gold in the autumn light. “And it’s just a day.” 

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t mean to overhear, truly. Mostly, he doesn’t mean to. But he’s so in love with her. With both _hers_ and the two of them together. _So_ in love. 

But it’s Kate’s day. A rare, lazy at-home day and he’s trying to be good. Trying to let her fill up on solo time. To hang back far enough that she forgets he’s even here. That she forgets herself and  lets every ridiculous endearment slip. Every ridiculous proclamation about how beautiful and smart and chubby and clever and amazing and delicious the baby is.  

He’s trying to let her have all that, because he gets it nearly every day. He nibbles her toes and dances her around the loft when she should be sleeping. When he should be writing or doing any one of the million things that needs doing, but she's irresistible. She's more fun than anyone who can't reliably find her own toes yet should be.  

He gets all that on the regular, and anyway, he’s as shameless by nature as Kate is shy about it. As she is _grumpy_ about it most of the time, because this perfect little creature has conquered her entirely and she flushes red every time he catches her cooing and singing. Every time he catches her talking nonsense and waiting anxiously for the babbled reply.  

He’s _trying,_ but the low, steady hum from the bedroom tugs him nearer and nearer. Kate, murmuring and murmuring. The punctuation of Lily’s shrieks and gurgles rising and falling and rising again. The way their two voices weave together. It tugs him nearer until he’s peering through the book case, grinning hard and holding his breath. 

 _Cold,_ he hears her say, and the wind swallows up the rest. The percussion of late November rain, and it sounds like an admonition. Like a reminder that this is her day. 

He’s leaving. He’s chastened and just drawing back when she speaks again. He doesn’t mean to overhear. 

_It’s just a day._

* * *

 

“You’re writing. Out here.” Her voice ascends. A surprised, climbing note that rouses Lily on her hip. “Shhhh,” she murmurs against the crown of her head. “Sorry. Shhhh.” 

“Lights out?” He nods toward the baby. Side-steps her question entirely, and she wonders what that’s about. Why he’s out here by the gas fire. At an actual table instead of kicked back in his desk chair. 

“Almost,” she says, letting it go for the moment. Letting whatever it is go in light of the Herculean task at hand. “Fighting hard, right Lil?” She opens her mouth wide, mimicking the baby’s yawn. Mirroring her scowl and getting a sloppy fist to the nose for her trouble. “Ow. _Hard_.” 

“I can . . .” He half rises. His hands flutter awkwardly at the lid of the laptop, but he stops himself. “You’ve got her.” He sits again. Hard. 

“I’ve got her,” she echoes. She lets him squirm a little, just to see if he’ll come out with it. Whatever’s going on with this self-imposed exile, but the tense set of his shoulders is too much. The forlorn look he fixes on the keys as he tries to make his fingers move again. “You can, too,” she blurts, loud enough to draw a squawk from Lily. She gathers the girl closer. Shushes her and hides a little behind her own hand as she cradles the back of her head. “We can both . . .” 

“Ok.” 

He shoots to his feet fast enough that she almost laughs. Almost, but Lily’s weight shifts. She takes on that heavy, boneless feel that means she’s just on the edge of sleep. Kate inclines her head toward the stairs. Beckons him to follow and steps lightly. Carefully. 

“We can both.” he murmurs like he’s learning it by rote. Like he didn’t mean her to hear. 

 

* * *

 

_It's just a day_

He wants to ask her.  If she meant it. If she didn’t. If he should have planned for this and if she’s been not talking about it as loudly as he has been. Hasn’t been. He wants to break the silence, thick as the gloom shrouding the city today, but she leaves him speechless. 

She’s beautiful. Deft and graceful as she eases Lily from her arms into the crib. Scowling and funny and not at all self-conscious as she talks back to their stubborn, eternally fussing daughter. “This is gonna take a while?” 

The question startles him. “A while?” He doesn’t mean to counter, but the words slip free. They draw another frown from her—another narrowing of the eyes—and he feels caught out.

“You’re the nap whisperer, Castle.” She inclines her head toward the baby, who’s well and truly gearing up for a fight. “What’s your secret?” 

“You,” he says, before he can think better of it. Before he can wonder why he would, and then the words are tumbling one after the other. “I . . . we talk about you. What you might be doing.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her spine stiffen, and he rushes on. “G-rated. Just . . . that you keep an eye on the bad guys. Keep us all safe. That . . . she likes that.” 

“She likes that.” 

Her throat is thick as she echoes the words. Her cheeks blaze, even in the dim nursery light, and he half wishes she hadn’t broken her own spell. Half wishes she’d left him speechless, and he half doesn’t, because she needs to know. He wants her to know she’s with them every minute. That it’s not his day most days and hers every once in a while, because she’s a constant. 

He wants her to know that.

 

* * *

 

She shoos him out. It’s unfair. Unkind, even, but her heart is too full just now, and if she’s going to do anything at all about that, there’s a baby in desperate need of a nap. So she shoos him out. Catches him by the shirt even as she shoves him through the door and kisses him fiercely. Takes his breath away with a hard, hot look. 

She’s his secret. 

“He’s mine,” she tells Lily. She reaches down and lets her fingers drift around and around the shell of the baby’s ear. “Daddy’s _our_ secret, isn’t he?” 

The golden brown eyes flicker open, attuned to the rising inflection of a question. She's a chatty little soul—all Castle in that—but it’s a losing battle. Her lids are heavy and the kicking of her feet grows erratic, as perfunctory as the grunts and murmurs of protest that come at longer and longer intervals as Kate lets the words trickle unthinking from her mouth.

“You keep an eye on him for me, don’t you?” The question barely parts the rosebud of the baby’s lips this time. The tide of sleep is tugging at her. “And I can count on you to tell me all the silly things he does. Leave nothing out,” she says, like she always does. Every night, whether she makes it home for bedtime or she's stealing a good night kiss.

 _Tell me all about your day with Daddy. Leave nothing out._  

It seems ridiculous, suddenly. Enough to make her laugh out loud. She flicks a glance toward the rocker in the corner and thinks of a hundred conversations. She spies the steady red light of the monitor and wonders if he knows. How often he’s listened in as she interrogates their daughter about what they get up to when she’s gone. How much trouble he’s gotten them into. 

She wonders and then doesn’t. She sees him at the table. By the gas fire, looking guilty. Writing far away from his usual haunt, and then she doesn’t wonder at all. She knows: He doesn’t listen in. Ever, and what struggle that must be. What a constant struggle.  

It weighs her down for a moment. For just a moment to think of all the things they still don’t say. All the careful dancing they’ve been doing, and for what. It weighs her down, but Lily sighs just then in utter contentment. Her head drops to the side and the dark sweep of lashes against her cheek is a blessing. A sign. 

“It’s not just a day,” Kate whispers. She kisses her fingertips and presses them to the warmth of her daughter’s cheek. She checks the monitor. Ticks the lamp down one more notch and rests her palm on the baby’s belly for the rise and fall of one breath, and then she’s going. She’s fumbling for her phone as she steps into the hallway. “It’s not.”  

 

 

* * *

 

He writes, strangely enough. It was mostly playacting earlier. Something to lead him not into temptation, as he turned the words over in his mind. 

_It's just a day_

He writes for real now. The words spill readily from his fingers. The gas fire warms the awkward hunch of his shoulders at the too-high table, and the rhythm of rain  at his back drives him on. He writes.  

He doesn’t know what it is he's working on, if it's work at all. He rarely does, these days, even when it’s pressing at him. Images and incidents. Funny and delightful things he taps into his phone with one clumsy thumb as Lily does her level best to wrestle it away from him. Even when it’s urgent enough to drag him, exhausted, from the life-giving warmth of Kate’s body at his side to the chill of the office, he doesn’t know what it is or could be, but he writes and writes, then and now until he's suddenly, absolutely done. 

He hears her moving overhead. The soft creak of the floorboard they really should do something about, except his loves this. He loves picturing her rocking from foot to foot with her head bowed over the crib. With the baby looking up, fighting hard against sleep. He loves wondering what she says. If she sings or says anything at all, and he feels guilty for the errant glance or two at the climbing lights of the monitor that tell him she does. She says a lot of things, and he loves wondering. 

But his fingers go still on the keyboard. The words come to a full and complete stop. His eyes fix, almost unseeing, on the screen. The black-on-white of words he can only make out a few at a time. 

_Secret_

_Safe_

_You_

_You_

_You_

His fingers go still, and he’s left wordless again. Speechless with need and desire and conviction that they both haven't been talking about it, and here he is, speechless, even as his mother’s voice wafts up from the speaker of the phone he hadn't realized was in his hand. 

_“Richard?”_

“Mother,” he stammers, coming back to himself. "Hello. Hi. Mother. I need a favor . . .”

 

* * *

 

She's clumsy about it when she comes down stairs. Her sudden epiphany and even more sudden decision what to do about it. What she needs and wants and will do about it. She's shy and utterly pent up. 

“I’m gonna shower," she mutters, frowning the next second, because it sounds like an invitation, and as much as she'd like it to be, it's not at the moment. It can't be, so she rushes by, palm out, and adds sternly, "gonna get dressed.”

“Ok.” 

The word wafts after her. It pricks something at the back of her brain, but she’s determined now. She's on a mission, and her dad has a physics-defying way of being early for everything, so she pushes it to the side. Mostly to the side as strips off and dives into the scalding spray. As she scrubs at scalp and skin and the baby-made snarls in her hair, vicious in her haste. 

She slips, shifting her feet too quickly in the overburden of suds that comes with trying to do too many things at once. She catches herself, banging her wrist hard against the corner shelf. She curses out loud. A long string of the nonsense substitutes she’s schooled herself into. A long string of things he makes fun of her for, even though he has his own, even more ridiculous Lily-safe list. 

She stumbles from the shower, laughing now. Giddy and rushing. Shoving her still-wet legs into jeans and making a mess of it. Hopping on one foot and shimmying her hips to get them all the way up as she tries to towel her hair with one hand. She’s verging on manic when something snags her attention.

Sound. Voices and _shit._ Even her dad can't have gotten her this fast, except he has. He must have.  The towel drops into one of a dozen puddles with a wet splat. She lurches toward the door and stops half way. She turns back and reaches for her phone with shaking hands, a bona fide curse falling from her lips. 

It chimes just as her fingers close around it. It lights up, and she's confused. She's _so_ confused, because he's going out of order. Because she hasn't sent it yet, and yet, there it is. 

_Time Out!_

"Castle!" She storms from the bedroom, demanding and bedraggled. "What . . .?" She stops short. Flushes red and looks just about to run. "Martha!" 

Castle's grinning at her, then he isn't. He's blank faced and at _least_ as flustered as she is. At _least_ as confused. "Jim!" 

They're crowded in the foyer—the four of them—still and staring for a long moment before someone remembers their manners. Her dad probably but they're still standing there after hugs and handshakes have gone around. It's still awkward until Kate decides it doesn't have to be.

It's still awkward until she sidles up to Castle and pushes up on her bare toes to kiss his cheek. To hold the screen of her phone up for him to see and whisper, "That's my line." 

"Is it?" He gives her a smug smile, but he's covering. He's pleased enough that his eyes are a little bright. 

Martha breaks into their shared moment of reverie. Of course it would be Martha. "What do you think, Jim? Another one already?"

"Can't happen soon enough for me," Jim pats the hand she's slipped through the crook of his arm. "So this is an announcement, then?" 

"No!" Kate blurts. 

"One!" Castle almost overlaps, looking about half as horrified as she feels. "Just the one. We need you to . . . need _you_ two . . ." he makes an awkward gesture. Stammers and collects himself, somehow. "Just the one. But we need you two to watch her. The one. There's . . ." 

He loses the thread again and she doesn't blame him. It's private, this strange anniversary of theirs. It's nothing either of them has ever let on about to anyone else. Nothing anyone else needs to know about. She curls her fingers around his. She stands behind him and finds her voice. 

“There's something we need to do.” 

 

* * *

 

It’s colder than he ever remembers it being. The wind is crueler, but it still feels like the right thing as they pick their way through the maze of gravestones, hand in hand. 

It’s hard work. He pulls her up short when she’s about to stumble in the gloom. She tugs him down to pass safely under branches heavy with a glittering coat of ice. The path isn’t as by-the-numbers as it once was, for either of them, and that’s a mercy. 

“It is,” she murmurs as they huddle together against a particularly bitter gust, and he wonders if he’s said it out loud or she’s lost in her own thoughts. She pulls him onward before he can ask. Around the last monument, and there they are. 

The grave is neat. Even the brown curls of grass are trimmed back, leaving the headstone clear. It’s as well-tended as ever, and still there’s something lonelier about it than he remembers. Something that makes him curl an arm tight around her. Makes him reach out with his free hand to strokes a stalk of heavy-headed lavender. 

“Still here,” she says, sounding shaky about it. Sounding uncertain, and he’s not sure what comes next until she turns into his body. Until her arms snake around his waste and she buries her face against his shoulder. “I wish we’d brought her.” She pulls back. “I don’t really. It’s . . .” Her teeth chatter on cue. She burrows closer. “It’s really freaking cold.” 

“She’s got her snowsuit,” he offers, not really offering. Trying to tease another one of those faces out of her that’s a smile and a frown at the same time. One of those faces that Lily does, too, and it cracks his heart wide every single time. “She’s to die for in that snowsuit.”

She laughs into his neck. A warm puff of breath. “To die for.” 

“We’ll bring her in the spring,” he says, happy with the way she rests easier against him now. The way they bear each other up. He nods to the lavender. “Or the summer, when it blooms. We’ll bring her, but for now . . . we can tell him about her.” 

They do. 

She starts. Haltingly, but she starts with how loud she yells. How fearsome a scowl she has and what a ridiculous miracle her little fingers are. She elbows him when he teases. Presses a smile to his knuckles when he chimes in. When they’re laughing and finishing each other’s thoughts. When their heads are bowed together and it’s a half-whispered prayer between them. 

“I’m glad,” she says suddenly. She curls her hands into tight fists around his lapels and pulls back to look at him. To look at him straight on for the first time since they left the loft really. She studies him a moment. Gathers herself, and when she speaks, her voice is thick. “I’m so _glad_ you’re her father, Castle.” 

He kisses her. Buys himself a moment and squeezes his eyes shut tight as he answers. “And I’m . . . grateful.” His voice fails him. He kisses her again, laughing. Crying, too, in the bitter cold. In the gathering dark. “I’m so grateful you’re her mother.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> This really didn't want to be written, apparently. I started something different, scrapped and started on this early this morning. My computer crashed. The brakes on my car went out while I was on the expressway. And here I am, just finishing under the wire. You think I’d know a sign when I saw one. 


End file.
